Community-Oriented Solutions to Environmental Problems with Violet Wulf-Saena

Today we meet Violet Wulf-Saena, Founder and Executive Director of Climate Resilient Communities (CRC), a non-profit serving the Bay Area communities of East Palo Alto, Belle Haven (near where I live!), San Bruno, and Alviso, and, soon, South San Francisco, East San Jose, and Gilroy.

A Samoa native, Violet began her career addressing climate issues within Samoa’s Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment. Since relocating to the US in 2005, she has dedicated herself to empowering underserved populations to build resilience against climate change.

We discuss cultivating trust with third parties, driving community participation, and the importance of environmental justice in adaptation work.

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This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Save the City: What is your origin story? How did you get involved with community-level climate resiliency work? 

Violet Wulf-Saena: I'm originally from Samoa, born and raised. Western Samoa, not American Samoa. We were governed by the Germans, then the British, and we were the first Pacific Island to gain independence. 

Island life is different. We're very connected to our environment and resources. Growing up my parents had plantations and fishing boats so we grew or caught a lot of our food. I saw how developments and populations impact the natural environment, I saw mangroves cut down to make way for a rubbish dump, and things like that. 

Then a cyclone hit. My first cyclone was Ofa in 1990. It was the first time I saw such strong winds and high waves. A lot of people lost their homes, there were a lot of changes to the shoreline. We had families staying in our home for months while they rebuilt. Seeing that devastation and having no water or electricity made me realize how impactful these extremes were on the environment and people.

When I had to decide what to study, I initially wanted to be an environmental lawyer, because no one was helping the village when the government cut down their mangroves to make room for a rubbish dump. But I didn’t have that opportunity so I decided to study the environment. After studying for three years in Fiji, I went home to work for Samoa’s Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment.

I worked on a project funded by the International Union for Conservation of Nature to establish protected marine areas. Then the Ministry wanted me to focus on climate change - Samoa signed the Kyoto Protocol and the United Nations (UN) Framework on Climate Change, so the government wanted me to take on the responsibility of helping Samoa meet our obligations to the UN. 

I started building programs addressing sea level rise and working on Samoa’s vulnerability assessment. I realized the country was already impacted by rising sea levels, and found the drive and passion to work on climate change.

Save the City: And how did you get involved in community resiliency in the States?

Violet: I came to California in 2005, and all the conversations were around climate mitigation - reducing greenhouse gas emissions, meeting our state targets, and solar panels, but nothing around adaptation…I wanted to understand why. 

I went back to school and did my Master’s in Environmental Management at Duke University; I researched and compared communities here [in California] to communities in Samoa. I was shocked to find the community I studied, East Palo Alto, had so many more similarities to Samoa than differences: highly vulnerable, underresourced, and lacking dedicated climate change programs. The only information they received about climate change was via social media.   

East Palo Alto is a diverse community and there were a lot of barriers, like language, that existed. I was studying programs and funding opportunities built for communities like this - for example, opportunities for free solar panels. But when you’re walking around and asking residents about them, nobody knows about them. I was very concerned, so when I graduated from Duke, I already had relationships because of my research in East Palo Alto, and I wanted to stay and help.

I volunteered at Acterra in 2016 to serve East Palo Alto residents and got a grant of $10,000 from the Palo Alto Community Foundation to roll out my first program, Green at Home to Grid Ready (now Resilient Homes). That program was designed to help families conserve energy in their homes and access energy-efficient technologies and solar panels. The goal was to help households save money on their PG&E (electric) bills as many of the families I served under this program paid an average of $400-$600 monthly in electricity bills. I worked with Grid Alternatives to conduct outreach to families eligible for free solar programs paid for by the State of California. 

I used most of the money for community outreach and interest in the program grew as a result. One of the things we learned during our first year is that while a family can qualify for free solar, their aging roof may not. We came across a lot of other barriers like that. Families, and especially elders, living off of fixed incomes didn’t necessarily have cash to replace their roofs. So we partnered with Habitat for Humanity and connected them to families in East Palo Alto who needed repairs. 

Save the City: What is the scope of your work at Climate Resilient Communities? 

Violet: Climate Resilient Communities is not just addressing one thing. We work directly with families at the household level through our Resilient Home Program (formerly known as Green at Home to Grid Ready). 

Another strategy is our Resilient Adaptation Program, which is led by community teams. It’s a space where communities can continue the conversation around climate change - a place to connect with the city around plans for future developments. There are a lot of nonprofits in East Palo Alto, all indirectly addressing climate change, but previously everyone was siloed. So I built a team of community leaders, residents, city staff, and other community-based organizations, including faith-based. I got a $60,000 grant to start that. With that grant, I was able to compensate community members to participate in monthly meetings and provide food at our meetings.

So a lot of our work is under the climate change community team umbrella - the teams make decisions, help guide adaptation projects, and engage in outreach. We started this in March 2019 and they continue to meet today. 

In addition to East Palo Alto, we have teams in Belle Haven, San Bruno, and Alviso, and South San Francisco, East San Jose, and Gilroy are in the pipeline. This framework we’ve built is how we meaningfully engage with communities, so they can make decisions and support ongoing adaptation projects.

Our Resilient Education program is designed to be accessible to hard-to-reach populations. For example, the Youth Climate Collective initiative pays young people $100 every time they attend an event so that they can take money home. We always try our best to understand and meet the needs of the communities we serve.

CRC’s fourth strategy is leadership. We are the ‘equity implementer’ for the Bay Area Adaptation Network (a collaborative network of local government staff and organizations working to help the Bay Area respond effectively and equitably to the impacts of climate change on human health, infrastructure, and natural systems). We ensure that the network and its services are equitable and accessible. We also lead an equity environmental justice network in Santa Clara and San Mateo and support smaller community organizations (e.g., with grant funding), bringing everybody together to work on common goals. 

A lot of non-climate organizations don’t have the capacity to understand how climate change intersects with their work. We help build this capacity and find ways to collaborate. Lastly, our newest program is focused on Resilient Readiness. This has to do with how communities can respond to natural disasters and climate extremes. 

Save the City: How do you enter a community? How do you build trust with smaller organizations so they feel comfortable working with you? 

Violet: Our approach is two-pronged. We work with trusted community leaders and support existing efforts. We don’t create anything new, we just help elevate the great work already being done.

In San Bruno, where we built the most recent community team, four people joined our first meeting. A City Council member, a school district representative, and two other residents. We also partnered with a local nonprofit there, and the community team grew organically after that. The thing with CRC is that we don’t tell communities what to do. Our purpose is to listen, to support them, and we build trust by showing up. 

Sometimes when we go into new communities, other community-based organizations see it as a threat, only because of funding. We compete for the same resources. So we have to be clear that we are not here to take money away from the community, CRC will help organizations secure grant funding and will do work where it’s needed. 

Save the City: A lot of your work involves environmental justice. Why does that matter in climate adaptation and resilience? 

Violet: What I’ve learned here in the United States is that there are layers of disparities - some communities are impacted by marginalization, some by disinvestment. I work in underserved communities that are vulnerable to heat waves. Why are they vulnerable? There are no trees. Why is that? Because of systemic policies that cripple them. So when I talk about environmental justice, it’s addressing those injustices and new issues as they come up. 

From East Palo Alto to Redwood City, there are more than 400 sites contaminated with hazardous waste that haven’t been cleaned. Now we’re talking about groundwater rising, we’re talking about sea level rise. There’s a high probability toxins will come to the surface, and who lives there? Communities of color, low-income, highly populated. That’s why we talk about environmental justice.  

Being able to work and live in East Palo Alto, get fair pay, afford to pay rent, and live in a decent, healthy home - these are things that we have to address. Right now most of the homes you find are inadequate to withstand extreme heat or cold. If we can’t address those things we will never be able to adapt. 

Lightbulb Moments

My key takeaways from interviewing Violet.

When it comes to adaptation, there’s no room for ego: CRC is successful, in part, because they work with other nonprofits and organizations. When it comes to people’s livelihoods and the urgency required to address climate issues, it shouldn’t matter who gets the credit for doing good work.

In working with underserved communities, you can’t just be a “climate organization.” You have to fill in gaps where resources are lacking, so your work becomes inherently intersectional. In this case, CRC can’t just focus on climate adaptation work, they have to provide education, build the capacity of other organizations, facilitate home repairs, etc.